Miles Davis wrote and recorded a tune by the
name of "Willie Nelson." And the Country singer Willie had
nothing but praise for Miles.

Before Miles died, they had
been rumored to be planning some sort of project together. What did
the "Prince of Silence" have in common with the hip white
country singer?

They both liked to get stoned in their ways.
But the ways were quite different so we'll discount that.

They
had the same manager, Mark Rothbaum, but that was only part of it.
They had the same record company. Their albums - Miles's "We Want
Miles" and Willie's "Always On My Mind" (both CBS) -
revealed some deep common denominators: understatement, grainy
texture, restrained tension, staying power.

Neither of them
made disposable music, their records will be around for a while. And
both had their own way of reinventing well-known melodies on their own
terms. Nelson's "Georgia" and Miles's "If I Were A
Bell," for two examples.

Miles was not the first jazz
musician to be influenced by country music. Charlie Parker was a Hank
Williams fan. When a friend asked why, he said: "Listen to the
stories, man. These cats really know how to tell a story."

Both
Miles and Willie were storytellers. Miles's' "Jean-Pierre"
is a children's story without words. And his version of George
Gershwin's "My Man's Gone Now" needs no lyrics to
communicate departed love. Willie Nelson sings about the same subject:
Once I had a love undyin', Didn't keep it up, wasn't tryin', Life for
me was just one party And then another... And then one night she said,
The party's over...

Nelson's "Always On My Mind"
was on the best-seller list for 23 weeks, his "Greatest Hits"
for 48. "In The Jailhouse Now," with Webb Pierce, was also
on the charts. Willie and Miles both recorded often; two or three
albums a year. Too often: they tended to compete with their own
records.

Each mixed standards with original material.
Willie's album "Always On My Mind" includes Procul Harum's "Whiter
Shade of Pale" and Paul Simon's "Bridge Over Troubled Water."
Willie's "Stardust" was not supposed to be a hit, Miles's
version of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" either.

Both
cultivated an outlaw image. They became superstars by following
neither corporate nor aesthetic rules.

Nelson began singing
in Texas honky-tonks in the 1950s. He moved to Nashville in the '60s,
but his songs were too hard-edged for the increasingly syrupy country
music industry. He could not adapt to Nashville formulas.

Some cowboys thought he was too much of a city slicker with his
ponytail and talking about Miles Davis and all. He moved to Austin,
Texas, where he and his friend Waylon Jennings (who wrote "Ladies
Love Outlaws") developed a reputation for bringing country music
back to its sources.

"Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys..."

Waylon
Jennings said that his idea of heaven is that after you die you spend
eternity in Willie Nelson's house.

Kris Kristofferson joined
the Austin "outlaws," who wrote and sang about deeply felt
subjects - survival, for example. This appealed to hillbillies and
hipsters alike. The Outlaws caught on big in the '70s.

Since
he first played with Charlie Parker in 1947, Miles Davis had been
changing; always moving into unexplored territory. He once said he was
"cursed" by his need for change. The law stayed the same, he
changed. He was an outlaw too.

About stage manners. Miles
turned his back on the audience and would not play encores. Willie
once cancelled a show in Virginia, returning his five-figure advance
because the local sheriff threatened to have him arrested if he drank
on stage.

During a concert for the inmates of the Missouri
State Penitentiary, Nelson wore his trademark bandana even though a
bandana is a symbol of non-conformity in prison. He also wore a "Nuke
the Prisons" T-shirt. And of course he's the guy who forgot the
words to the "Star Spangled Banner" during the 1980
Democratic convention.

Listening to a Miles Davis album,
Chet Baker said: "That sure is romantic music." And it's
true - Miles had in fact never played bebop, cool, fusion or funk. He
had always been a flat-out romantic.

Willie too. He finds his
romance on the road, singing about it in what is probably his best
known song: "On the Road Again." ("Goin' places that
I've never been/Seein' things that I may never see again...Makin'
music with my friends...")

Like true romantics, both of
them loved to disappear - Willie on the road, Miles just disappearing.
With Byronic waves of their capes, they kept fading into the mists in
the middle of some secret, heroic caper. Always to reappear again with
new stories to tell.